steady state

Sunday I did no training. The rowing club was closed because of long distance swimming championships, so we decided to make it a relax day.

Just a relax day, huh? Romana and I went to the spa resort that is close to the rowing club, and while driving there we were talking a bit about back pain and the back injury I had a few weeks ago. I have got feedback from different people that my back muscles are too tight and I should do something about it. Romana goes to massage regularly so she suggested I sign up for a massage session and see what that does.

OK.

Sounds like a good idea. I have been thinking about this already for a long time. Problem is, I am extremely ticklish. Always been. The other problem is that I have a pretty wide intimate space and always feel uncomfortable about unknown people entering it:

But it is time to bite the bullet. I am a fan of getting out of your comfort zone and I guess the only way to get over it is to learn how to deal with it when getting a back massage. I also imagined that if a sturdy masseur would work on my back it would rather hurt than tickle. I can handle pain.

So when we arrived I ordered that massage, and spent the time until my appointment by taking a sauna, then having a light lunch.

All relaxed and open to new experiences, I waited for the masseur to pick me up. Turns out the masseur was a she, a nice lady about half my age. I should have known. About all the staff in this resort is female and twenty-something.

This was a bit more out of my comfort zone than I expected.

Now I am normally not very prudish, but this was starting to get scary. Not to a normal person, but to me.

The lady asked me what I wanted to have massaged. I told her that I sometimes have problems with my back and would like to a massage. “OK,” she said. “Take off your sheet and lay down here.”

Again, I am normally not very prudish, but this also caught me by surprise. But after A, you have to be ready to say B. Right? So I did what she said. Slightly terrified now. And starting to sweat.

I am not an expert, but I have the feeling the massage was done well. She worked the muscles of my back thoroughly and I had the feeling I could relax and relieve the strain on those muscles. But of course there were moments where I would get a slight tickle response.

To me it was extremely controlled. Being my normal self, I would jump off the massage table, arms flailing and hysterically screaming. None of that. But of course I would not be relaxed.

The masseuse noticed of course. She “solved” it by saying “relax” in a soft voice, quite close to my ear. Right in that “intimate space” that I talked about above.

Anyway, probably much ado about nothing for normal people but it was quite an experience for me!

Still have to say that I did enjoy the massage and I do think I need to start seeing a masseur more regularly, but it will take time to get used to it and be comfortable with it.

Of course I told the whole story to Romana who just laughed.

Fierce steady state

Arriving at the lake this morning, the day starting at a chilly and humid 11C, I noticed that my temporary double partner Jiri was also launching. Usually, he starts his row when I am already cooling down, but today he had a lot of things to do and decided to start early.

We discussed a bit and discovered that both of us were doing steady state. Great. I like rowing next to somebody.

I knew there was a big risk that I would push too hard, but that I accepted that, and was actually looking forward to it. There has to be some fun in training as well, right?

Warming up and technique drills. Then off into a headwind for the first part of the steady state.

We were rowing next to each other and of course I was pushing a bit harder than normal. He’s 6:30 erg man, 82 kg heavy, so he should be fast. He gained half a length on my doing what I estimate to be 20spm. I was alternating 18/20/22spm in two minute intervals. He gained during the 18spm, but I gained back what I lost during the 22spm. Splits were faster than normal.

Turn at Sirka and same story back. He crabbed during the first 100m so he was rowing 30m behind me, but doing a 22spm he gained that back. At one point I looked at my phone and noticed I was doing 2:06 pace at 21spm!!

This continued all the way to Rokle where he finished one length ahead of me.

Silence for a minute or so. I took a glance at him and noticed he was breathing heavily, trying to disguise that. I was in a similar situation.

I took a recovery day. A full day of work until 10pm, only interrupted by dinner and a hot, relaxing bath. Still feeling tired from Sunday’s races.

Tuesday Morning

Looking forward to a planned L4, steady state session with 18spm, 20spm, 22spm, 24spm rate ladders. No difficulty getting up early. It was looking to become a nice sunny day. Temperatures have dropped more than 10 degrees since Sunday, to a nice maximum temperature of 21 degrees C. It was 15 degrees when I drove to the lake.

Quite some chop, so decided to row to the castle.

Rowing to the turning point, about 500m past the castle, I did 2x10min rate ladder (4min/3min/2min/1min in 18/20/22/24spm). Paces were not particularly fast but I tried to focus more on technique.

The lake was choppy, but the river part was perfect flat water with a thin layer of mist on top. It was so beautiful, I decided to take some pictures when I turned, and then again when I passed the castle.

Then I decided to skip the rate ladders and focus on technique. I did some technique drills on the way home. Rowing with pauses, mainly.

Arrived at the lake late, very late. I just had difficulty leaving work, with all the things going on.

High temperature but very low wind, resulting in a lake which was not choppy but there were these longer waves caused by all the recreation boats, tourist ferries, and police speedboats doing “training”. The police training is quite interesting. I think they specialize in rescuing long-legged blond women, because all I see them do is speeding up and down the lake carrying young, blond women.

I heard an anecdote recently, about a sculler from the other club, who was stopped by the police because he was rowing on the part of the river that is forbidden for “sport”. When asked what he was doing, he said he was a drug smuggler who was carrying a load of crystal meth to Veverská Bityška.

Wrong answer, of course.

He had to row back to the club, police following him a few meters behind in their speed boat. This must have been an interesting scene, a relaxed, slowly sculling single sculler, followed by two guys in a police boat. Back the club he had to show is ID, and was thoroughly lectured. That was it.

Anyway, yesterday I was not going to do any smuggling. I decided to do a 1km trial. My plan is to do these regularly to get used to the pain and be able to rate up through it. The dreaded “500m” bite, as so well described in this blog.

Also a good opportunity to experiment with CrewNerds spoken start command.

Warming up: a few 10 stroke sets at higher rates (25, 30, 32spm). Turning in Rokle. Start practice: first one stroke, then two, then three, etc. Then a slow row along the nude beach to the start.

“Ready – Attention – Row”.

I took off at 35spm but quickly lowered it to 31spm. The plan was to hold 1:50, and increase the rate every time I would see a substantial deviation.

The plan was quickly binned. It was very difficult to hold 1:55.

In the second half I started to have difficulty keeping my line and ended up rowing in the buoys a couple of times. In the final 100m I was rowing in the wake of the tourist ferry.

Excuses. Excuses.

The end time was a 3:52. Still a good result given the heat but not the 3:40 that I am chasing this year. Perhaps it isn’t realistic?

During the row I was convinced there was a strong headwind. When I stopped, it didn’t seem so strong anymore. Still the Italian flag on the fireworks pontoon was flying evidence that I had been rowing into a headwind.

It was warm and there was a headwind

After the 1km I needed a few minutes to recollect myself, then I did a 6km steady state. After the row I went for a swim in the lake. It was nice and warm in the top 50cm, but below that it is still quite cold. First time swimming in the lake, this season.

I traveled to Brussels on Monday afternoon, arriving at 9pm. No training on Tuesday, just mental endurance training during long meetings. Traveled home in the evening, arriving at 11:30pm.

Wednesday

I had some difficulty to reach the rowing club. It is the annual fireworks festival, and yesterday’s location was our lake. So police was blocking the road to the rowing club, not allowing anyone in, I guess to avoid a traffic and parking chaos. I tried to argue with the police man that I was going to the rowing club and would be parking on private property. He asked if I could prove that … Apparently a bag with sports clothes and rowing club stickers on my car wasn’t enough.

So I had to drive around and use the back road, which took another 25 minutes (because of the traffic chaos created by the police closing off the lake). I was now under time pressure, because it was already past 6pm and I would have a conference call at 7:30.

Steady state in the double with Radek. We just did 2×12 minutes because we didn’t have time for more. The second 12 minute interval was interrupted by a short phone call that I had to take.

After the row, we quickly washed the boat and put it in the rack. After that I had literally 30 seconds left before the start of the conference call.

This morning I went for the annual medical checkup. It’s still not compulsory but I find it interesting.

Morning urine: OK

Blood: Waiting for lab results

Fat: 7.9% (0.1% more than a year ago). A bit more fat on the belly and on the thighs. All within the measurement error if you ask me.

Weight: 71.8kg (0.2kg more than a year ago)

Lung vital capacity: 5.45 L – exceeding last year’s value by 2% but I believe this is all in the measurement error. Anyway, I was told it is a good value.

The doctor recommended to see a physio more often (well I never go, so perhaps I should start) because of some hard spots in my back muscles. Also she recommended to strengthen my lats. Funny, one would think that rowing would strengthen them.

Should do more stretching as well.

Blood pressure before exercise OK. Electrocardiogram OK.

Then it was time for the spiro test on the cycle. Before the test, I asked what my last year’s results were. Apparently I stopped at 355W and 182 bpm heart rate. OK. Challenge.

I reached 370W, at roughly the same HR (don’t remember by “heart” now, so will have to wait for email with test results).

But the doctor didn’t like that I had a slightly high blood pressure at one point during the exercise. Also they didn’t like how long it took (10 minutes) to drop. Hm.

Arriving at work, I had two cups of strong coffee, than sat down and measured myself. Values were OK. I think the high values during the test were an anomaly, or perhaps some fatigue, or “white coat hypertension”. The doctor asked if I had stress at work. 🙂

Difficult to judge how stressful their work is, but it looked more relaxed than what I do. 🙂 🙂

Anyhow, will keep measuring and looking forward to the complete test results.

What stresses me out is that my single is still in Hodonín. I agreed to have it on the second trailer load, assuming that he would turn around to pick up the remaining boats on Monday evening or Tuesday morning, but this didn’t happen. God knows when he will pick them up. It’s time to buy that small trailer.

I wrote the manufacturer today. I am ordering the same trailer that I saw. Just adding one small cross-beam on the midde layer, to make it easier to carry doubles and pairs. See the yellow dot: